"Cutting that spending is not going to solve the United States' long-term deficit problem, which is almost entirely due to exploding medical cost"

Its true. Privatizing the railways or the roads will not yield enough money to allow Americans to be healthy. The only real way Americans could be more healthy is by either (i) spending less on wars or (ii) taking more money from its children. Its a tough choice. A civilized country can make the right choice though.

Well of you exempt a small part of the budget from being cut, what's to stop that argument being made with say ethanol subsidies or other little pet projects. The deficit won't be ended by only reforming Medicare and Social Security (although it will help a lot). As an economist who wants the budget balanced fairly soon I think the subsides must end.

However, as someone who uses Amtrak, I don't want to see my prices rise so I personally don't want the subsidies to end. Keep paying for part of my bills US Taxpayers.

But, as an economist, top hat, you should know that train travel is an efficient and low-impact form of transportation that has difficulty competing with subsidized auto travel. Until gas taxes and vehicle fees cover the costs of roads, 'part of my bill' is quite reasonably part of the taxpayer's bill

What you say is true; the decision of implementing it belongs to the government. If people are willing to pay sin taxes for using a car and pay more taxes to subsidise trains in an attempt to be greener then they will elect people to office with that agenda.

However, subsides can make businesses dependent on government and thus lower their efficiency. Then they are often able to ignore market forces and don't have to provide the best service (my last Amtrak train was one hour late).

If you want a green economy you are right. If you want a more efficient economy remove the subsidies on trains and roads.

You can make a very good case for investing in trains and public transportation to counteract the costs of road congestion. I suspect Amtrak's current network doesn't do a particularly good job in addressing that congestion, however. So you can make a better case for investing in new, more locally based rail lines than you can for keeping a loss making long distance system going.

You are correct. The long term global economic trend of easily extractable fossil fuels is what is driving the growth market of regional passenger rail service. Airline travel will remain economically dominant in the longer distance transportation markets.

It should be noted that unprofitable Amtrak service through the sparsely populated western states is mandated by the congressional delegation from those states, usually represented by the same political party that refuses to provide subsidies to accommodate the unprofitable operation that they insist upon.

If these congessional delegates were managers in the private sector, they'd be dismissed for failure to represent the best interests of the shareholders.